{"id":46856,"date":"2026-02-24T11:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T19:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=46856"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T19:21:10","slug":"boston-is-turning-empty-office-buildings-into-1500-homes-why-cant-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/boston-is-turning-empty-office-buildings-into-1500-homes-why-cant-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston is turning empty office buildings into 1,500 homes. Why can\u2019t San Francisco?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0J.K. Dineen<\/a>, Staff Writer Feb 23, 2026 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gift Article<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It\u2019s\u00a0part of Boston\u2019s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.Simon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/em><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco<\/a> and Boston<\/a> are coastal cousins: a pair of historic cities full of character and culture, narrow alleys and stately avenues, seafood and salty waterfronts, old money and new, left-leaning politics sprouting from roots in ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And by early 2023 both cities were grappling with the same questions: What would it take to create housing out of the office buildings<\/a> that had emptied out since the pandemic? How to revive hollowed downtown neighborhoods<\/a> by injecting thousands of residents while also reducing the glut of ghosted office space that had crushed property values?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both cities responded by launching office-to-residential programs around the same time. Three years later they are in very different places. Boston\u2019s conversion program is a wild success. San Francisco\u2019s has yet to get off the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Boston\u2019s program launched in 2023 the city has received 22 applications to convert 1.25 million square feet of office space into 1,517 units. From the city\u2019s Seaport and Back Bay to the South End and Financial District, developers are snapping up historic buildings \u2014 many of them brick-and-beam structures with wood floors and arched windows \u2014 and reinventing them as living spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile in San Francisco, despite extensive efforts\u00a0\u2014 the city has cut fees, sliced red tape, relaxed zoning restrictions and eliminated both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes\u00a0\u2014 not one conversion project has started construction. One project announced in January of 2024, Forge Development Partners\u2019\u00a0124-unit conversion of the Humboldt Bank building<\/a>\u00a0at 785 Market St., stalled out due to lack of financing. The developer now hopes to start construction in 2027. Another, a conversion of the\u00a0Warfield office building<\/a>\u00a0on Market Street, was foreclosed on by its lender before construction started and sold to a nonprofit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is Boston\u2019s conversion program generating so much housing while San Francisco is still waiting for applications to come in? There are a couple of obvious reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is that Boston\u2019s strong mayoral system allowed Mayor Michelle Wu to move fast to offer financial incentives for conversions, without passing local or state legislation. In July of 2023, Wu announced that developers willing to convert downtown office buildings to housing would be eligible to receive a 75% property tax abatement <\/a>over 29 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Burns, who heads up Pinnacle Development, which last year completed Boston\u2019s first conversion and has two others in the pipeline, said the tax abatement is helpful \u2014 but the finances have to make sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t turn a bad deal into a good deal,\u201d he said. \u201cYou still can\u2019t pay someone $600 a foot for a vacant office building, but it can move the needle from something that is marginal to something that really does work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, what Wu did with the swoop of a pen has taken San Francisco more than a year of complicated political and legislative maneuvering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed a bill establishing a downtown financing district<\/a>. Eligible projects in the district \u2014 it covers the Financial District, Union Square, parts of SoMa and the Market Street corridor from the Embarcadero to Civic Center \u2014 will receive annual incentive payments over 30 years to offset development costs of converting office buildings to residences. The payments are backed by the increases in future property tax revenue that will be generated once the struggling office buildings become apartments or condos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While city planners estimate the payments will amount to about $100,000 per unit for a typical project, establishing the program was not easy. It required both the state Assembly and the board of supervisors to approve legislation. An independent board of directors was formed to oversee the district and sign off on qualified projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe city is doing all the right things to get there, but boy did it take a long time,\u201d Forge Development CEO Richard Hannum said after the vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa\u00a0Follman, an architect with San Francisco\u2019s Skidmore Owings & Merrill said she hopes the new financing district \u201cwill ignite a fire\u201d under building owners who have considered converting but not done it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBoston did three years ago what San Francisco did last week,\u201d Follman said. \u201cIt takes time for those financial incentives to play out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, beyond the political advantages, Boston has another secret weapon: A senior level manager who is in charge of personally ushering every project through every step from pre-application to construction permitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That person, John Weil, is a former real estate developer who pounds the pavement looking for potential conversion candidates. Rather than submitting plans to all the relevant departments \u2014 public works, fire, building \u2014 developers only have to hand the application to Weil.  Once a project qualifies for the program, he takes over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have one point of contact, it sounds silly and mundane but it\u2019s actually very important,\u201d\u00a0 said Prataap Patrose, senior advisor to the chief of planning for Boston. \u201cIt\u2019s truly one stop. John is that one person to call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weil started in the summer of 2023 after a consultant had studied 380 buildings that would qualify for the program. He looked into how much debt there was on each property, what the ownership structure was, how much of it was leased and for how long. He sought out owners who might be interested in selling and developers who might be interested in buying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI try to come at this from a developer\u2019s mentality. I spent my days walking the buildings, calling the owners, and saying, \u2018What else do you own? \u2019\u201d he said. \u201cMy card has my cell phone number on it. I expect it to ring seven days a week \u2014 and it does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weil encouraged developers and building owners to come to the city early in the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t wait until you have a fully baked concept to call me,\u201d he said. \u201cCall me literally when you have a street address and I will walk you through what I know about that building, whether I think it\u2019s a good candidate for conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there are so many good candidates. In Boston\u2019s Seaport District, Burns is converting an old dry goods warehouse on 263 Summer St. with its famous \u201cBoston Wharf Co. Industrial Real Estate\u201d red neon rooftop sign. It will yield 77 apartments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the 11-story, 255-unit conversion project in the pipeline next to the South Meeting House on Washington St., where Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty hatched a plan to dump 342 chests of British East India Co. tea into Boston Harbor in 1773. Next to the Custom House Tower and a pocket park, 18 units are being built out at 150 Milk St.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely one of those \u2018Paul Revere slept here\u2019 buildings,\u201d Weil said. \u201cYou come out on a snowy evening and squint and it feels like it\u2019s 150 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burns said the buildings for conversions tend to be naturally affordable because they lack the yoga rooms and rooftop fire pits and gyms that add to the cost of modern residential high-rises. His first project, and the first to be completed under Boston\u2019s program, leased up right away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the sort of building where you look up at the beams and see the names of the guys who framed it or the ship that it came off of,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While San Francisco is far behind Boston\u2019s conversions progress, local developers and architects say it\u2019s not for lack of trying. The city has eliminated planning code requirements and streamlined permitting and approval processes. Former Mayor London Breed successfully passed Proposition C in 2024, which waived transfer tax fees for office-to-residential conversions once the building is converted to housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been practicing in San Francisco for 20 years now and I have never seen as much movement as I have in the last 18 months,\u201d Follman, the architect, said. \u201cThe planning code has been rewritten. The zoning has changed. One of the huge barriers (to conversions) is people don\u2019t know how much the city has done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, San Francisco has unique challenges. Construction costs are the highest in the country and many conversions will require seismic upgrades \u2014 something Boston doesn\u2019t have to worry about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacob Bintliff, manager of economic recovery initiatives for the city\u2019s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said recently that interest in the city\u2019s conversions program has grown as the financing district got closer to launching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have been fielding a couple of inquiries a week over the last few weeks. People are saying, \u2018Let me see if I understand this right, I am interested. I am looking at buildings,\u2019 he said. \u2018We are encouraged by the level of interest and the level of detail that people are asking about.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are about 518 buildings within San Francisco\u2019s new financing district, about 50 of which the city has identified as being good candidates for conversion. If they were all to be converted to housing it would produce about 4,400 units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the math makes sense it can be an efficient way to produce housing with tons of character in the heart of the city, Burns said. While his Boston firm has mostly built new multifamily complexes, conversions are appealing because they provide \u201ccompression on the rate of return\u201d \u2014 basically, new housing can be delivered faster so revenue starts rolling in sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you already have a foundation, you already have a utility structure, you already have a facade, roof, windows \u2014 all that saves time,\u201d he said. \u201cThe faster we can purchase something and bring it online the better our returns are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feb 23, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.K. Dineen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.K. Dineen covers housing and real estate development. He joined The Chronicle in 2014 covering San Francisco land use politics for the City Hall team. He has since expanded his focus to explore housing and development issues throughout Northern California. He is the author of two books: “Here Tomorrow” (Heyday, 2013) and “High Spirits” (Heyday, 2015).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0J.K. Dineen, Staff Writer Feb 23, 2026 (SFChronicle.com) Gift Article John Weil stands inside 263 Summer St. in Boston, an office building being transformed into housing. It\u2019s\u00a0part of Boston\u2019s successful office to residential conversion program, which Weil runs.Simon Simard\/For the S.F. Chronicle San Francisco and Boston are coastal cousins: a pair of historic… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46858,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46856\/revisions\/46858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}